Today’s post was written by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team.

Earlier this month, we announced the worldwide availability of Microsoft 365 Business, a purpose-built productivity and management solution for small and medium-sized businesses. We also introduced Microsoft Connections, Microsoft Listings, Microsoft Invoicing, and the Office 365 Business Center in the U.S., U.K., and Canada to help small businesses empower their employees and unlock growth and innovation.

Additional new Office 365 features this month focus on enhancing organizational productivity and simplifying business processes while maintaining a secure and compliant environment for teamwork.

Enhancing security, privacy, and compliance

As organizations embrace digital transformation, it is increasingly important for IT to ensure that employee and customer data is protected and handled appropriately. New updates to Office 365 this month help organizations understand what information they have stored, manage access to resources, and strengthen their compliance posture.

Analyze more content with Advanced eDiscovery—eDiscovery is a tool that helps organizations analyze data across Office 365 to identify information that they have stored about a person or topic. Now Office 365 E5 subscribers can upload documents from outside Office 365 and analyze them with Advanced eDiscovery using the new content import feature. This extends the benefits of Advanced eDiscovery beyond Office 365, providing organizations with a single way to discover content relating to compliance matters from across their organization.

Secure external sharing links in OneDrive and SharePoint—In September at Ignite, we announced a number of improvements to external file sharing in OneDrive and SharePoint, including the ability to send secure external sharing links. This feature is now generally available to Office 365 subscribers, allowing external recipients to access files and folders—without a Microsoft account—by providing an email-based verification code each time a user accesses a file. IT administrators can also specify how often external recipients must get a new code and re-verify their email address, providing ongoing protection for your organization’s files and folders when they are shared with external recipients.

Improve compliance posture with Compliance Manager—Starting this month, organizations can participate in the preview for Compliance Manager, now available via the Service Trust Portal. Compliance Manager is a solution built into Office 365 that connects Microsoft security and compliance tools with the unique regulatory requirements different organizations may encounter. This helps Office 365 subscribers improve their compliance posture through risk assessments on Microsoft Cloud services, actionable insights, and simplified compliance workflows.

Simplifying processes and saving time with intelligent tools

This month’s Office 365 updates also help customers manage resources in more effective ways and make it easier for Firstline Workers to optimize their time throughout the workday.

Clock in and out in Microsoft StaffHub—New features in StaffHub help organizations centralize many of the daily processes workers undertake, reducing overhead and maximizing the impact of their Firstline Workforce. Now workers can clock in and out of their shifts within the app, in addition to managing daily activities and accessing company news and resources. These updates help streamline daily processes and help create a more well-informed workforce.

Automate files with Microsoft Flow in OneDrive—Flow provides a set of tools to automate tasks across apps and services, simplifying the process of managing repetitive and often complex actions like PDF conversion and approval routing. Starting this month, Office 365 subscribers can now run workflows on selected files and folders in OneDrive, allowing for the simplification of common tasks like saving multiple email attachments to folders and providing upload notifications.

Automatic drive classification with Mile IQ—New features in MileIQ use Microsoft AI to save time by automatically classifying trips. MileIQ will now detect frequently visited locations, learn how they are typically classified, and offer to auto-classify them in the future. Additionally, Work Hours makes it simple to set the times a user works, including multiple shifts, and will automatically classify drives outside of those hours as personal. Subscribers always have the option to re-classify a drive if necessary from the web dashboard.

Bringing AI to job seekers with Resume Assistant—Earlier this month, we announced the preview of Resume Assistant, a new feature in Microsoft Word to help Office 365 subscribers craft compelling resumes with personalized insights powered by LinkedIn. With over 80 percent of resumes updated in Word, Resume Assistant helps job seekers showcase accomplishments by surfacing relevant examples of work experience and top skills that industry professionals use to describe themselves. Ultimately, this helps Office 365 subscribers be more easily discovered by recruiters and land their ideal job.

Additional updates

GDPR compliance—GDPR requirements are effective in May 2018. Learn more about GDPR compliance in our latest webcast.

Office Mobile apps on Chromebook—Earlier this week, we released a preview of the Office Mobile apps for Google Chromebooks. These apps were originally designed for Android phones, and they’re not yet fully optimized for the Chromebook form factor. We’ve done some initial work on the end user experience and want to gather customer feedback. As with all of our mobile apps, an Office 365 subscription is required to edit documents on devices with a screen size of 10.1 inches or greater.

Office Lens—Office Lens is now integrated within OneNote to provide scanning, cropping, and rotation of photos, documents, whiteboards, and business cards.